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• 1 2013-06-29T23:18:27-07:00 Beladuna 9 plain 17355 2013-08-29T09:33:51-07:00 In 1952, half way through the production of The Third River, Film Centre proposed that the IPC establish a permanent film unit in Baghdad. Michael Clarke was approached to direct the unit, however he declined the job due to personal reasons. John Shearman took up the position, and hired the young British cameraman Peter Kelly to stay on in Baghdad as lead cinematographer of the film unit. According to Shearman, the IPC Film Unit objectives were first, “to train Iraqi film technicians in [the British] tradition of technical and documentary filmmaking,” and second, “to make films which would explain to the people of Iraq what the oil company was doing in their territory…that it was not really taking away the black gold because it was putting money back into national development.” 
   By 1953, IPC’s public relations strategy took on a more nuanced approach in response to the “Iranian oil crisis” beginning to produce original Arabic-language film episodes of a company cine-magazine. Beladuna was filmed and edited by a team comprised of a British director, two British cameramen, and several Iraqi film technicians, scriptwriters, and editors. This included Muhammad Shukri Jameel, Simon Mehran, Abdul Latif Saleh, Yehyeh Faiq, and Kerim Mejid, some of whom went on to have significant filmmaking careers after the 1958 revolution. Arthur Elton, senior film advisor for the IPC, spelled out the motivation behind the approach strategy to make films for Iraqis and by Iraqis, writing that:

  If…done imaginatively and from the point of view of the people…themselves (and not from that of the film technicians introduced from overseas), the effect will be gradually to create a favourable attitude towards the oil industry as a whole, and to make the Operating Companies seem a more natural and useful part of the economy…than many people are at present prepared to allow. Irrational, emotional attitudes will be damped down and criticism directed into informed and constructive channels.

  As the title of the documentary series Beladuna –which translates as “our country” - clearly suggests, the cine-magazine embodied this rationale. However, despite the significant Iraqi participation, the films were ultimately produced with the oversight of British directors and producers, and the scrutinizing censorship of Iraq Petroleum Company and Iraqi Government officials.
  Among the dozens of episodes made as part of the Beladuna series, the modernization of Baghdad reoccurred as a central theme. A More Beautiful Capital (Arabic: Assimatun Ajmel) is a short documentary made in 1955 as part of the tenth episode of the IPC’s Arabic language cine-magazine. The film depicts the transformation of Baghdad’s built environment in the mid-1950s. The documentary is constructed as a sequence of montages accompanied by an original soundtrack and scripted voiceover, narrating various scenes of the making of modern Baghdad. Visible evidence of urban change is used to illustrate and substantiate scripted commentary. The musical composition shifts in tone and level to enhance the mood of each sequence. The narration works to persuade audiences that destruction of older neighborhoods is necessary to facilitate construction of modern buildings, which are fundamental to making Baghdad into “a capital fit for a modern country.”